Notes · Classical GreekUK · A-Levels

Prose composition or comprehension

Component 02 is the one place in the qualification where a genuine choice is offered. It runs for an hour and a quarter, carries 50 marks and 17 per cent of the A-Level, and it has two sections of which exactly one is answered. Section A sets translation, comprehension and questions on syntax and accidence on an unseen passage of Greek prose, which the specification states will be a passage of oratory for examination until 2032, chosen so that its author does not overlap with the Group 1 or Group 2 authors examined in that year. Section B sets a passage of at least a hundred words of continuous English to be turned into Classical Greek. The two routes demand very different things — one is precise analytical description of somebody else's Greek, the other is the active production of your own — and the choice is normally settled by the centre long before the paper is opened. These notes teach both, because production is genuinely assessed here and because the analytical vocabulary of Section A is the same vocabulary a composition candidate uses to check their own work. One orthographic rule belongs specifically to this component: breathings are written, accents are not.

6 sections~53 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 2

T·0555 / 10

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the language: translate an unseen passage of Greek prose and answer questions on its syntax and accidenceAO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the language: translate a passage of at least 100 words of English into accurate Classical GreekAO1 · Demonstrate a detailed understanding of linguistic structures, describing them in the correct grammatical terminology

Operators:translateparsestate the casename the constructionexplainjustifycompose

basic level

At AS Level the same two-route choice exists on a shorter paper, the prose passage stays within the Defined Vocabulary List published for H044, and the composition asks for less continuous English. An AS candidate needs secure agreement, secure case usage and the commonest subordinate clauses.

higher level

At A-Level the whole of Appendix 5d is live on both routes. A Section A candidate must be able to name any construction on that list without hesitation, in the terms an examiner uses. A Section B candidate must be able to produce them: indirect statement in all three of its constructions, the participle doing the work of a clause, correct sequence after a historic verb, the uses of ἄν, and the seven standard conditional patterns, all with the breathings written.

Depth

Text

Contents · 6 sections

Prose composition or comprehension

Component 02: two routes, fifty marks each, and how the choice is made#

FoundationOCR H444 Component 02 — Prose Composition or Comprehension, 1 hour 15 minutes, 50 marks, 17% of the A-Level, testing AO1OCR H444 Component 02 Section A — translation, comprehension and questions on syntax and accidence on an unseen prose passage; for examination until 2032 the passage will be a passage of oratoryOCR H444 Component 02 Section B — translation of a passage of at least 100 words of English into Classical Greek

The mechanics first. Component 02 is an hour and a quarter for fifty marks, seventeen per cent of the A-Level, and it tests AO1 alone. There are two sections and a candidate answers one of them, not both; each is worth the whole fifty. Section A sets an unseen passage of Greek prose with three kinds of task on it — translation, comprehension questions, and questions on syntax and accidence. Section B sets a passage of at least a hundred words of continuous English and asks for it in Classical Greek. Because the two sections are equally weighted there is no arithmetical advantage to either, and because they are alternatives there is no need to prepare both to examination standard. There is, however, every reason to understand both, and the reason is given at the end of this section.

The specification tells you something about Section A that is worth building a course around. For examination until 2032 the prose passage will be a passage of oratory, and its author will not overlap with the Group 1 or Group 2 authors prescribed for that year. Attic oratory is a well-defined body of writing: speeches composed for the law courts and the assembly at Athens in the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, the surviving bulk of it transmitted under the names of the ten orators of the ancient canon — Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Aeschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides and Dinarchus. The guarantee of non-overlap is not decorative: Demosthenes appears in one of the printed prose set-text cycles, so the promise that the unseen author will differ from that year's set authors is a real constraint the examiners have undertaken to observe. Confirm the position for your own series.

Section B is the only place in the qualification where Greek is produced rather than consumed, and the difference in skill is larger than it looks. Reading Greek allows you to recognise a form you could not have generated; writing Greek does not. A composition candidate needs the paradigms cold, the case usages as active habits, the article under conscious control, the aspect system understood as aspect rather than time, and the standard subordinate constructions available at the speed of writing. What a composition candidate does not need is a large vocabulary: the English will be pitched so that ordinary Attic prose vocabulary suffices, and where a word is unusual it is normally supplied. The demand is grammatical, not lexical.

Section A is the mirror image. Nothing has to be produced; everything has to be named. A comprehension question asks what the Greek says and expects an answer in English with the evidence taken from the Greek. A syntax or accidence question asks what a form is, what case or mood it stands in, and what governs it, and expects an answer in the standard grammatical terminology — genitive absolute, supplementary participle, accusative and infinitive, purpose clause in historic sequence. It is a route that rewards precise metalanguage and fast, accurate reading, and it punishes vagueness: the word thingy of the sentence is not an answer, and neither is a translation offered in place of an explanation.

How the choice is actually made. In almost every centre it is made once, early, for the whole group, because the two routes need different lessons across two years and cannot both be taught properly in the time. The honest criteria are these. Composition suits a candidate whose grammar is genuinely secure and who finds it easier to be right than to be articulate, and it has the practical advantage that a piece of composition can be marked against a model answer in minutes. Comprehension suits a candidate who reads quickly, writes clear English and enjoys naming things, and it has the practical advantage of resembling the work already being done for Component 01. Neither is easier in the abstract. What is certain is that a candidate must know by the start of the second year which one they are sitting, because a decision deferred is a decision to prepare neither.

Worked example

The same idea, seen from both routes

Here is one sentence of constructed teaching Greek in an oratorical register: ἐγὼ μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, οὐδέποτε τοῦτον ἠδίκησα· οὗτος δὲ πολλάκις εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐμὴν εἰσελθὼν τὰ χρήματα ἔκλεψεν. Show what Section A would do with it and what Section B would have had to do to produce it.

Section A, task one: translate
I, gentlemen of the jury, have never wronged this man; but he has often entered my house and stolen the money. Note the two decisions English forces: ἠδίκησα is an aorist, and English idiom takes a present perfect here rather than a simple past; and εἰσελθών is a circumstantial aorist participle which English is happiest turning into a coordinated finite verb, has entered and stolen, rather than into a having-entered phrase.
Section A, task two: comprehension
A comprehension question on this sentence might be: what does the speaker say the defendant has done, and how often? The answer is that he has entered the speaker's house and stolen money, and that he has done so often, πολλάκις. Two facts, because two marks; the Greek word is worth quoting because it is the word that answers the second half of the question.
Section A, task three: syntax and accidence
Three questions the passage invites. εἰσελθών: parse it and say what it agrees with — aorist active participle, nominative masculine singular of εἰσέρχομαι, agreeing with οὗτος, the subject of ἔκλεψεν. τὴν ἐμήν: explain its position — attributive, with the article repeated after the noun, the ordinary Attic way of attaching an adjective without ambiguity. τοῦτον: state its case and its function — accusative singular of οὗτος, direct object of ἠδίκησα, since ἀδικέω governs the accusative of the person wronged.
Section B, working backwards
Now suppose the English had been set for composition. Every choice the Greek makes would have had to be made deliberately. μέν and δέ to mark the contrast between the two men. οὐδέποτε rather than οὐ ποτε. The aorist ἠδίκησα for a completed act, not the imperfect. The article twice in τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐμήν, because the house is a definite one and the possessive is attributive. εἰς with the accusative, not ἐν with the dative, because there is motion into. And a participle for the first of the two verbs, because Greek prefers to subordinate one action to another where English coordinates them.
Why both routes belong in one topic
The two lists above are the same list read in opposite directions. A composition candidate who cannot name the attributive position will misplace the possessive; a comprehension candidate who has never had to choose between εἰς and ἐν will not see why the question is asked. Whichever section you sit, the analytical vocabulary is the tool, and the difference is only whether you use it to describe or to build.

Result: Section A would ask for the translation, for two facts drawn from the Greek, and for three grammatical identifications in standard terminology. Section B would have required the same six decisions to be taken in advance: the contrastive particles, the aorist for a completed act, the repeated article in attributive position, εἰς with the accusative for motion, the accusative after ἀδικέω, and a circumstantial participle where English would have used a second finite verb.

Typical mistakes

Leaving the choice of route open into the final year, so that neither is practised to examination standard.
Assuming composition is harder because it produces Greek, when its vocabulary demand is far smaller than an unseen's.
Preparing Section A as though it were only a translation, and neglecting the syntax and accidence questions that carry a substantial part of the section.

Active revision

Whichever route your centre has chosen, spend one session on the other before you commit. Take a short passage of Attic oratory in any edition and, in twenty minutes, translate a paragraph and answer six grammar questions you set yourself on it. Then take a hundred words of narrative English and, in twenty minutes, put it into Greek. Compare not which felt more pleasant but which produced fewer outright errors, and show both to your teacher.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

Section A: reading a passage of oratory, and answering the comprehension questions#

StandardOCR H444 Component 02 Section A — translation and comprehension on an unseen prose passage; for examination until 2032 the passage will be a passage of oratoryOCR H444 Component 02 — the author of the Section A passage will not overlap with the Group 1 or Group 2 authors examined in that year

Attic oratory has a recognisable shape and it repays learning as a genre before you meet it under time. A law-court speech opens with a proem addressed directly to the jurors, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί or ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, which asks for a fair hearing and often disclaims skill in speaking. It moves to a narrative of what happened, told in the aorist and imperfect with the speaker as the injured party. It then argues, most characteristically from probability — what is εἰκός, what a reasonable man would have done — and calls witnesses and documents. It closes with an appeal. Each part has its own grammar: the proem is full of second-person verbs and imperatives, the narrative of participles and aorists, the argument of rhetorical questions, conditions and indirect statement.

The vocabulary of the courts is small, closed and worth learning as a set, because it will occur and because it is not what a Xenophon-trained reader has in store. A prosecutor διώκει and a defendant φεύγει, so φεύγω in a legal context means to be the defendant rather than to run away. γράφομαι is to indict, δίκη and γραφή are the two kinds of action, μάρτυς is a witness and μαρτυρέω to testify, ψῆφος is the voting pebble and hence the verdict, νόμος and ψήφισμα are a law and a decree, ζημία is a penalty, ὁ ἀντίδικος is the opponent. Add the standard connectives of argument — καίτοι, τοίνυν, μὲν οὖν, γάρ, δῆτα — and most of a passage's non-narrative vocabulary is covered.

The syntax of oratory is the syntax of Appendix 5d, deployed in longer sentences than Xenophon writes. Expect periods that hold a main verb back through several subordinate clauses; expect indirect statement in all three constructions, since a speaker is constantly reporting what other people said; expect conditions of every type, because argument is conditional by nature; expect the articular infinitive, τὸ ἀδικεῖν, as a way of naming an action; and expect rhetorical questions introduced by πῶς, τί, ἆρα or οὐ, which expect the answer the speaker wants and must be translated as questions. None of this is new grammar. It is the same grammar under more pressure.

Comprehension questions are marked on content, and the discipline is to answer the question that was asked, in the number of points the mark allocation implies. A two-mark question wants two facts. A question asking why something happened wants the reason the Greek gives, not the reason you find plausible. A question asking what a speaker claims wants the claim, not your assessment of it. Answer in English, in short complete statements, and where the answer turns on a particular Greek word, quote that word — a quotation costs three seconds and proves that the answer came from the text rather than from the introduction. Do not translate the whole sentence in the hope that the answer is inside it; examiners mark what answers the question.

One kind of comprehension question deserves separate mention because it is easy to answer badly: the question that asks how a writer conveys something, or what impression is created. Even in an AO1 component this is a question about the Greek, so the answer must name the Greek feature and then say what it does. He uses a rhetorical question, πῶς εἰκός ἐστιν, which invites the jury to supply the answer themselves and so makes the conclusion feel like theirs rather than his. Feature, then effect, with the Greek quoted. An answer that gives only the effect has not shown where it came from; an answer that gives only the feature has not answered the question.

Worked example

An oratorical period translated clause by clause, and four comprehension questions answered

Constructed teaching Greek in an oratorical register, not a quotation. ἐγὼ μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, οὐδέποτε τοῦτον ἠδίκησα· οὗτος δὲ πολλάκις εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐμὴν εἰσελθὼν τὰ χρήματα ἔκλεψεν. καίτοι πῶς εἰκός ἐστιν ἄνδρα ὃς οὕτω πλούσιός ἐστι κλέπτειν; ἀλλ' ὑμεῖς, τῶν μαρτύρων ἀκούσαντες, γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἀληθῆ λέγω. Translate it, then answer the four questions set at the end.

Sentence 1: the proem contrast
ἐγὼ μέν sets up a contrast that οὗτος δέ will complete; the μέν is a promise and should not be translated as on the one hand but simply held. ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί is the standard address, gentlemen of the jury, and stands outside the syntax. οὐδέποτε is the compound negative, never; τοῦτον is the accusative object of ἠδίκησα, since ἀδικέω governs the person wronged in the accusative; ἠδίκησα is aorist. The raised dot that closes the clause is an ano teleia and does the work of an English semicolon. Render: I, gentlemen of the jury, have never wronged this man.
Sentence 1 continued: the participle carries a whole clause
οὗτος δέ picks up the promised contrast: but he. πολλάκις, often, belongs with what follows. εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τὴν ἐμήν is motion into, so εἰς with the accusative, and the possessive stands in attributive position with the article repeated. εἰσελθών is an aorist active participle agreeing with οὗτος and expressing the action prior to the main verb; τὰ χρήματα is its object nothing — it is the object of ἔκλεψεν, the main verb. Idiomatic English coordinates the two: but he has often entered my house and stolen the money.
Sentence 2: the rhetorical question and the argument from probability
καίτοι is a connective of objection, and yet. πῶς εἰκός ἐστιν is the standard formula of the argument from probability: how is it likely. εἰκός ἐστι takes an accusative and infinitive, so ἄνδρα is the accusative subject and κλέπτειν the infinitive, with the relative clause ὃς οὕτω πλούσιός ἐστι sitting inside the accusative-and-infinitive frame and describing ἄνδρα. Note the accent thrown onto πλούσιός by the enclitic ἐστι that follows it. Render: and yet how is it likely that a man who is so rich should steal? It is a question and must stay one.
Sentence 3: address, participle, future, indirect statement
ἀλλά changes direction. ὑμεῖς is emphatic, you for your part. τῶν μαρτύρων ἀκούσαντες is a circumstantial aorist participle agreeing with ὑμεῖς, and ἀκούω takes the genitive of the person heard, which is why the witnesses are in the genitive. γνώσεσθε is future middle of γιγνώσκω, second person plural. ὅτι ἀληθῆ λέγω is indirect statement with ὅτι, the mood and tense of the direct words retained in primary sequence, and ἀληθῆ is the neuter plural of ἀληθής used as a noun, the truth. Render: but you, when you have heard the witnesses, will know that I am telling the truth.
Four comprehension questions answered
(i) What does the speaker say he has never done? [1] He has never wronged the defendant, οὐδέποτε ἠδίκησα. (ii) What two things does he accuse the defendant of doing? [2] Entering his house, εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἰσελθών, and stealing the money, τὰ χρήματα ἔκλεψεν. (iii) On what grounds does the speaker suggest the defendant's guilt is surprising? [2] The defendant is very rich, οὕτω πλούσιος, and it is therefore not likely, οὐκ εἰκός, that such a man would steal. (iv) What does the speaker say will convince the jury? [1] Hearing the witnesses, τῶν μαρτύρων ἀκούσαντες.
What the mark allocations were telling you
The one-mark questions wanted one fact each and would have gained nothing from a second. The two-mark questions wanted two distinct pieces of information, and answering the second with only the man is rich would have scored one. In every case the Greek word quoted is short and is the word the answer turns on. That is the whole technique: count the marks, supply that many facts, quote the deciding word, and stop.

Result: Translation: I, gentlemen of the jury, have never wronged this man; but he has often entered my house and stolen the money. And yet how is it likely that a man who is so rich should steal? But you, when you have heard the witnesses, will know that I am telling the truth. The four comprehension answers are: never wronged him; entered the house and stole the money; that he is very rich and so unlikely to steal; hearing the witnesses. Each answer supplies exactly as many facts as the question was worth.

Typical mistakes

Translating the whole sentence instead of answering the question, and leaving the examiner to find the answer inside it.
Giving one fact for a two-mark question, or five for a one-mark question.
Answering a why question from general knowledge or from the English introduction instead of from the Greek.
Turning a rhetorical question into a statement, which loses both the syntax and the rhetorical point.

Active revision

Take a page of any Attic orator with a translation available. Cover the translation. Set yourself six comprehension questions with mark allocations of one, one, two, two, three and three, answer them in ten minutes, then check against the translation. Score yourself only on whether each answer contains as many distinct facts as it was worth. Repeat weekly with a different speech, and keep a running list of every courtroom word you had to look up.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR)

Section A: answering questions on syntax and accidence#

StandardOCR H444 Component 02 Section A — questions on syntax and accidence set on the unseen prose passageOCR H444 Appendix 5d — the accidence and syntax required for Components 01 and 02

The grammar questions in Section A are the most predictable marks in the qualification, because there are only about a dozen things they can ask and each has a fixed answer shape. Parse this form. State the case of this word and say why it is in that case. Name the construction. Explain the mood. Say which word this participle or adjective agrees with. Give another part of this verb. Explain why this negative is μή rather than οὐ. Every one of these is answered in a single sentence of the form: the label, then the grammatical category, then the evidence. λαβόντες: aorist active participle, nominative masculine plural, agreeing with οἱ στρατιῶται, the subject of the main verb. Three clauses, no prose, no translation.

Use the examiner's terminology, not a paraphrase of it. The words that must be available instantly are: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative; singular and plural; masculine, feminine, neuter; present, future, imperfect, aorist, perfect, pluperfect; indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, infinitive, participle; active, middle, passive; primary and historic sequence; attributive and predicative position; direct and indirect object; genitive absolute, accusative and infinitive, supplementary participle, articular infinitive, verbal adjective; purpose, result, condition, concession, indirect statement, indirect question, indirect command, fearing, prevention, temporal, causal, indefinite, comparative. A candidate who says the doing word instead of the participle has not answered the question, however well they understand the sentence.

The single commonest question is the participle question, and it has three parts that must all appear. What it is: tense, voice and the word participle. What form it has: case, number and gender. What it does: which noun or pronoun it agrees with, and what kind of participle it is — attributive if it has an article, circumstantial if it sets the scene for the main verb, supplementary if it completes a verb of knowing, perceiving or ceasing, or part of a genitive absolute if it and its noun are both genitive and neither is the subject of the main clause. The last of those is the one to check first, because a genitive absolute is unmistakable once you have learned to look for two genitives standing together outside the main construction.

The mood questions are the second commonest, and they are answered by naming the sequence. A subjunctive in a purpose, fear or indefinite clause appears after a primary main verb — present, future, perfect. An optative in the same clause appears after a historic main verb — imperfect, aorist, pluperfect — and is called the optative of historic sequence. An optative in indirect statement or indirect question after a historic verb is the oblique optative and represents an indicative of the direct words. An optative with ἄν is potential and means would. An optative without ἄν in a main clause is a wish. Say which of those it is and name the governing verb: aorist optative, purpose clause in historic sequence after ἐπορεύοντο.

Two practical rules finish the technique. First, answer in the space and the time the mark allocation implies: a one-mark parsing question is one line, and a three-line answer to it wastes time that the translation needs. Second, never answer a grammar question with a translation. Explain why μή is used here does not mean translate the clause; it means because purpose clauses are negatived by μή. The two are so often confused that it is worth reading each question twice and underlining the instruction word — parse, state, name, explain, give — before writing anything.

Worked example

Nine grammar questions answered in the Section A format

Constructed teaching Greek, not a quotation. οἱ δὲ στρατιῶται, τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κελεύσαντος, τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντες ἐπορεύοντο πρὸς τὸ ὄρος, ἵνα τοὺς πολεμίους ἴδοιεν. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀφίκοντο, ἔγνωσαν ὅτι οὐδεὶς πάρεστιν. Answer the nine questions below, each in one sentence.

1. κελεύσαντος — give its case and name the construction
Genitive singular, aorist active participle of κελεύω, masculine, agreeing with τοῦ στρατηγοῦ; the two together form a genitive absolute, a phrase grammatically independent of the main clause and best rendered when the general had given the order. The give-away is two genitives standing together where the main clause has no use for a genitive.
2. λαβόντες — parse it and say what it agrees with
Aorist active participle, nominative masculine plural of λαμβάνω, agreeing with οἱ στρατιῶται, the subject of ἐπορεύοντο. It is circumstantial, and its aorist tense places its action before that of the main verb: having taken up their arms, or after taking up their arms.
3. ἐπορεύοντο — give tense, mood, voice, person and number
Imperfect indicative middle, third person plural of πορεύομαι. The imperfect is the tense of a journey in progress, and πορεύομαι is a deponent, which is why a middle form carries an active meaning.
4. ἴδοιεν — name the mood and explain why it is used
Aorist optative active, third person plural of ὁράω. It stands in a purpose clause introduced by ἵνα, and the optative is used because the main verb ἐπορεύοντο is imperfect and so the clause is in historic sequence. Had the main verb been present or future, the subjunctive ἴδωσι would have stood instead.
5. If the purpose had been negative, which negative would be used, and why?
μή, giving ἵνα μὴ ἴδοιεν. Purpose clauses, like all final and prohibitive constructions, are negatived by μή; οὐ is the negative of statements of fact and of the indicative in main clauses.
6. τὰ ὅπλα — state the case and its function
Accusative neuter plural of τὸ ὅπλον, the direct object of the participle λαβόντες. Note that a participle governs its own objects exactly as a finite verb does, which is why the accusative here belongs to λαβόντες and not to ἐπορεύοντο, an intransitive verb that could not take it.
7. πρὸς τὸ ὄρος — which case does πρός govern here, and what does it express?
The accusative, expressing motion towards. πρός takes three cases with three senses — accusative for motion towards, genitive for from the side of or in the name of, dative for at or in addition to — so naming the case is half the answer and naming the sense is the other half.
8. πάρεστιν — explain why it is present indicative and not optative
Third person singular present indicative of πάρειμι, standing in an indirect statement introduced by ὅτι after the aorist ἔγνωσαν. In historic sequence a verb in indirect statement may either be changed into the corresponding tense of the optative or be retained in the mood and tense of the speaker's original words; here it has been retained, which keeps the report vivid.
9. Give the aorist active infinitive of λαμβάνω and of γιγνώσκω
λαβεῖν and γνῶναι. Both are second aorists with irregular stems, and γνῶναι is a root aorist of the -μι type, which is why it does not end in -εῖν. Questions of this kind test the principal parts directly and are worth learning as a table rather than as individual facts.

Result: The nine answers are: a genitive absolute; an aorist participle agreeing with οἱ στρατιῶται; imperfect indicative middle third plural; the aorist optative of a purpose clause in historic sequence; μή, because purpose is negatived by μή; accusative, object of the participle; accusative after πρός, expressing motion towards; a present indicative retained in indirect statement rather than turned into the oblique optative; and λαβεῖν and γνῶναι. Every answer names the category and points at the evidence, and none of them translates the Greek.

Typical mistakes

Answering a grammatical question with a translation of the clause.
Parsing a participle without saying which word it agrees with, which is usually where the mark is.
Describing rather than naming: the bit that says what he was doing instead of supplementary participle.
Writing a paragraph for a one-mark question and running short of time for the translation.

Active revision

Take any twenty lines of Attic prose and set yourself fifteen grammar questions on it in the exam's own wording — parse, state the case and say why, name the construction, explain the mood, say what it agrees with. Answer them in ten minutes in the three-clause format. Then mark yourself on terminology alone: one mark for each answer that uses the examiner's word rather than a description of it. Repeat until the terminology score is fifteen out of fifteen every time.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR)

Section B: building a correct Greek sentence#

AdvancedOCR H444 Component 02 Section B — translation of a passage of at least 100 words of English into Classical GreekOCR H444 Appendix 5d — learners will be expected to write breathing marks as part of the prose composition; accents are not requiredOCR H444 Appendix 5d — standard patterns of case usage, uses of prepositions, negation including compound negatives

From an English sentence to a Greek sentence

Fig. 1The order matters more than any individual step. Candidates who begin at the left of the English sentence and translate rightwards produce Greek-looking English; candidates who begin with the main verb and its aspect produce Greek. The last step is on the diagram because the specification makes it examinable: breathings are written in this composition, accents are not.

Composition is not translation word by word; it is rebuilding an idea in a different shape. The method that works is always the same and is worth making mechanical. Read the whole English sentence and decide what its main verb is, because Greek will hang everything on that. Choose its tense, and choose it by aspect and not by the English tense name: the aorist for a single completed event, the imperfect for a process or a repeated action, the present for something going on now, the perfect for a present state resulting from a past act. Then fix the subject in the nominative and the objects in their proper cases. Then look at the remaining English clauses and ask which of them Greek would rather express with a participle. Only at the end think about word order.

Agreement is where compositions are won and lost, because an agreement error is unmissable and it is entirely avoidable. Every adjective, participle and pronoun agrees with its noun in case, number and gender. Every finite verb agrees with its subject in person and number — with the one famous exception that a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb, so τὰ στρατεύματα ἔμενεν, the armies were staying. The article agrees with its noun in case, number and gender too, and a mismatch between article and noun is the single most conspicuous error a composition can contain. Check agreement as a separate pass at the end; do not trust yourself to have got it right while thinking about something else.

The article is a system, not an ornament, and English gives no help with it. Greek uses the article with a noun already identified, with abstract nouns where English drops it — ἡ ἀρετή, virtue — and often with proper names. It distinguishes attributive from predicative position, and the distinction changes the meaning: ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἀνήρ and ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἀγαθός both mean the good man, but ἀγαθὸς ὁ ἀνήρ means the man is good. The article turns anything into a noun — τὸ ἀδικεῖν, the act of doing wrong; οἱ τότε, the men of that time; τὰ τῆς πόλεως, the affairs of the city — and with μέν and δέ it works as a pronoun, ὁ μέν ... ὁ δέ, the one ... the other. Learn these as patterns to be produced, not merely recognised.

Case usage has to be active. The accusative is the direct object, the extent of space or time, and the respect in which something is true. The genitive is possession, the whole from which a part is taken, separation after verbs of ceasing and depriving, comparison after a comparative, the time within which, and the price. The dative is the indirect object, the instrument, the manner, the person interested, the point of time, and the agent with a perfect passive. Learn also which verbs govern which case, because English gives no warning: πείθομαι, πιστεύω, ἕπομαι, βοηθέω and χρῆσθαι take the dative; ἀκούω, ἄρχω, τυγχάνω, ἐπιθυμέω and κρατέω take the genitive. And learn the prepositions in the sets they belong to, since most govern more than one case with more than one meaning.

Two rules about the negative and one about the page. The negative of a statement of fact and of the indicative in a main clause is οὐ, which becomes οὐκ before a smooth breathing and οὐχ before a rough one; μή negatives everything else — infinitives except in indirect statement, participles expressing a condition, purpose and fear clauses, prohibitions, wishes, and the protasis of a condition. Compound negatives reinforce rather than cancel, so οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν εἶδεν means nobody saw anything, and a simple negative after a compound one would reverse the sense. As for the page: the specification expects breathing marks to be written in this composition and does not expect accents. Every word you write beginning with a vowel needs a rough or a smooth breathing, and every initial ρ is written ῥ. Put them in as you write, not afterwards.

Worked example

Four English sentences turned into Greek, with every decision justified

Put each English sentence into Classical Greek, and state the reason for every grammatical choice. Write the breathings; do not write accents on your own work, though they are printed here as they would be in an edition. (a) The armies were staying in the plain. (b) The good man does not wish to do wrong. (c) When the general had said this, the soldiers departed. (d) I am afraid that the general may not arrive.

(a) the neuter plural rule
τὰ στρατεύματα ἔμενεν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ. στράτευμα is neuter, so its nominative plural is τὰ στρατεύματα — and a neuter plural subject takes a SINGULAR verb, hence ἔμενεν and not ἔμενον. The tense is imperfect because staying is a state extended in time, not a single event. ἐν takes the dative for place where, so ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ; had the sense been into the plain it would have been εἰς τὸ πεδίον with the accusative. Breathings: ἔμενεν and ἐν each need a smooth breathing on the initial epsilon.
(b) the article, the position, and the articular infinitive
ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἀνὴρ οὐ βούλεται ἀδικεῖν. ἀγαθός stands between the article and the noun, which is attributive position and gives the good man; had it stood outside as ἀγαθὸς ὁ ἀνήρ the sense would have been the man is good, a complete change of meaning. The negative is οὐ because the verb is an ordinary indicative statement of fact, and it stays οὐ and not οὐκ because βούλεται begins with a consonant. ἀδικεῖν is a prolative infinitive completing βούλεται and is not itself negatived. Breathings: ὁ takes a rough breathing, ἀγαθός and ἀνήρ and ἀδικεῖν each a smooth one.
(c) the genitive absolute
ταῦτα εἰπόντος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ οἱ στρατιῶται ἀπῆλθον. The English when-clause has a subject, the general, which is not the subject of the main clause, the soldiers. That is precisely the situation the genitive absolute exists for: put both the participle and its subject in the genitive, εἰπόντος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ. The participle is aorist because the saying was complete before the departing, and εἰπών is the participle of the second aorist εἶπον. ταῦτα is the accusative object of the participle. Breathings: οἱ takes a rough breathing, and ἀπῆλθον a smooth one.
(d) fear that not
φοβοῦμαι μὴ οὐκ ἀφίκηται ὁ στρατηγός. A clause of fearing is introduced by μή where English says that, and by μὴ οὐ where English says that not, so the double negative here is the construction and not a mistake. The mood is subjunctive because the main verb φοβοῦμαι is present and the clause is therefore in primary sequence; after a historic main verb it would have been the optative ἀφίκοιτο. οὐ appears as οὐκ because ἀφίκηται begins with a vowel carrying a smooth breathing. ἀφίκηται is the aorist middle subjunctive of the deponent ἀφικνέομαι. Breathings: ἀφίκηται smooth, ὁ rough.
The check that catches most errors
Read the four sentences again asking only three questions. Does every finite verb have a subject in the nominative, and do they agree — remembering the neuter plural? Does every adjective, participle and article agree with its noun in case, number and gender? Is every negative the right one — οὐ for the indicative statement, μή for the clause of fearing? Three passes, thirty seconds each, and they catch the errors that examiners see most often.

Result: (a) τὰ στρατεύματα ἔμενεν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ. (b) ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἀνὴρ οὐ βούλεται ἀδικεῖν. (c) ταῦτα εἰπόντος τοῦ στρατηγοῦ οἱ στρατιῶται ἀπῆλθον. (d) φοβοῦμαι μὴ οὐκ ἀφίκηται ὁ στρατηγός. The decisions were: singular verb after a neuter plural subject; ἐν with the dative for place where; attributive position for the adjective; οὐ for a statement of fact; a genitive absolute where the subordinate subject differs from the main one; and μὴ οὐ with the subjunctive in primary sequence for a fear that something may not happen.

Typical mistakes

Giving a neuter plural subject a plural verb.
Letting the article disagree with its noun, usually after the noun's case has been changed and the article forgotten.
Using οὐ in a purpose clause, a prohibition or with an infinitive that is not in indirect statement.
Carrying an English preposition straight into Greek instead of asking which case the Greek verb governs.
Writing the accents, which are not required, and omitting the breathings, which are.

Active revision

Write ten sentences of Greek a day for a fortnight, each one testing a single thing: one with a neuter plural subject, one with an attributive adjective in each of the two positions, one with a verb governing the dative, one with a genitive of comparison, one with a compound negative, and so on. Keep them short. Mark them yourself against a grammar, and keep a tally of your own recurring errors: almost every candidate has three or four, and knowing which three is worth more than any amount of general practice.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages (Department for Education)

Section B: subordination, sequence, conditions and indirect statement#

AdvancedOCR H444 Appendix 5d — subordinate clauses: indirect statement, question, command and prohibition; purpose; result; conditional; causal; temporal; indefinite; fearing, prevention and precaution; concessive; comparativeOCR H444 Appendix 5d — uses of ἄν; uses of the infinitive and of the participle

Sequence across the subordinate clauses

Fig. 2Primary sequence means the main verb is present, future or perfect; historic sequence means it is imperfect, aorist or pluperfect. The emphasised cell records the qualification that most often confuses candidates: after a historic main verb a purpose or fear clause normally moves to the optative, but retaining the subjunctive is entirely correct Attic and is common in lively narrative, so an examiner will accept either.

Everything difficult in composition is subordination, and subordination in Greek runs on one governing idea: sequence. If the main verb is primary — present, future, perfect or future perfect — a dependent subjunctive stays a subjunctive and a dependent indicative stays an indicative. If the main verb is historic — imperfect, aorist or pluperfect — the dependent verb may move into the optative. That is the whole rule, and it applies to purpose clauses, fear clauses, indefinite clauses, indirect statement with ὅτι and indirect question. Two qualifications matter in practice. In purpose and fear clauses the subjunctive is often retained after a historic verb for vividness, and that retention is good Attic, not an error. And in indirect statement and question the change to the optative is optional, so retaining the direct words is equally correct.

Indirect statement comes in three constructions and Greek chooses between them by the governing verb, not by the sense. Verbs of saying such as λέγω and verbs of showing take ὅτι or ὡς with a finite verb: λέγει ὅτι ὁ στρατηγὸς ἀπῆλθεν. Verbs of thinking and believing, and φημί, take an accusative and infinitive, with the tense of the infinitive representing the tense of the direct words: νομίζει τὸν στρατηγὸν ἀπελθεῖν. Verbs of knowing and perceiving take a participle agreeing with the person known: οἶδε τὸν στρατηγὸν ἀπελθόντα. Learn which verb takes which, because the constructions are not interchangeable, and remember that when the subject of the reported clause is the same as the subject of the main verb it is left unexpressed and any predicate stands in the nominative.

The conditional system is worth learning as a closed set of seven patterns, because English disguises the distinctions that Greek marks. Simple present or past: εἰ with the indicative in the protasis and any indicative in the apodosis. Present general: ἐάν with the subjunctive, present indicative. Past general: εἰ with the optative, imperfect indicative. Future more vivid: ἐάν with the subjunctive, future indicative. Future less vivid: εἰ with the optative, optative with ἄν. Present contrafactual: εἰ with the imperfect indicative, imperfect indicative with ἄν. Past contrafactual: εἰ with the aorist indicative, aorist indicative with ἄν. Two things carry across all seven: the protasis is negatived by μή and the apodosis by οὐ, and ἄν appears in the apodosis of every unreal and every less vivid condition, and nowhere else.

The uses of ἄν are on the Appendix 5d list in their own right, and they reduce to four. With the subjunctive in a subordinate clause, ἄν makes the clause indefinite, and it fuses with the conjunction: ἐάν, ὅταν, ἐπειδάν, ὃς ἄν. With the optative in a main clause it makes the potential optative, would: λέγοιμι ἄν, I would say. With a past indicative in a main clause it makes an unreal statement or the past habitual: ἔλεγον ἄν, I would have said, or I used to say. And it attaches to an infinitive or a participle to carry the force of the potential or unreal clause it stands for in reported speech. Where a question asks about ἄν, one of those four is always the answer.

Three clause types complete the list and each has a trap. Result clauses use ὥστε, and the choice between the infinitive and the indicative is a difference of meaning: ὥστε with the infinitive states a natural or intended consequence, ὥστε with the indicative states one that actually occurred, and the negative changes with it, μή with the infinitive and οὐ with the indicative. Temporal clauses referring to the future take ἄν with the subjunctive, ὅταν and ἐπειδάν, and πρίν takes the infinitive after an affirmative main clause but ἄν with the subjunctive or the bare optative after a negative one. And verbs of effort and precaution take ὅπως with the FUTURE indicative, which is the one place a future indicative is required in a subordinate clause and the one construction candidates most often replace with a subjunctive.

Worked example

Four subordinated English sentences composed in Greek, decision by decision

Put each into Classical Greek and justify every choice of mood, tense and particle. (a) The Athenians, having heard these things, sent messengers to the general, so that he should not lead the army out of the city before the enemy arrived. (b) But he, thinking that they were afraid, said that he would obey the laws. (c) If anyone were to say this, we should not believe him. (d) If they had heard this earlier, they would not have been afraid.

(a) the frame: main verb, participle, purpose
οἱ δὲ Ἀθηναῖοι ταῦτα ἀκούσαντες ἀγγέλους ἔπεμψαν πρὸς τὸν στρατηγόν, ἵνα μὴ ἐξαγάγοι τὸ στράτευμα ἐκ τῆς πόλεως πρὶν τοὺς πολεμίους ἀφικέσθαι. The English having heard is a circumstantial aorist participle, ἀκούσαντες, agreeing with the nominative subject; ἀκούω takes the accusative of the thing heard, so ταῦτα. The main verb ἔπεμψαν is aorist, a single completed act. πρός with the accusative for motion towards a person.
(a) the purpose clause and the sequence
So that he should not is a negative purpose clause: ἵνα with μή, never οὐ. The main verb ἔπεμψαν is aorist, so the clause is in historic sequence and the optative ἐξαγάγοι is the natural choice; the subjunctive ἐξαγάγῃ would also be correct and would make the narrative more vivid. ἐξαγάγοι is the aorist optative of ἐξάγω, built on the second-aorist stem ἀγαγ-. ἐκ with the genitive for motion out of, so ἐκ τῆς πόλεως.
(a) before the enemy arrived
πρίν after an affirmative main clause takes the infinitive, with its subject in the accusative: πρὶν τοὺς πολεμίους ἀφικέσθαι. Had the main clause been negative, πρίν would have taken ἄν with the subjunctive or the bare optative instead. ἀφικέσθαι is the aorist middle infinitive of the deponent ἀφικνέομαι.
(b) two verbs, two different constructions
ὁ δὲ νομίσας αὐτοὺς φοβεῖσθαι ἔφη τοῖς νόμοις πείσεσθαι. νομίζω is a verb of thinking, so it takes an accusative and infinitive, αὐτοὺς φοβεῖσθαι, and not ὅτι; the present infinitive represents a present in the direct thought. φημί likewise takes the infinitive, and because the subject of the reported clause is the same as the subject of ἔφη it is not expressed at all. The future infinitive πείσεσθαι represents a future in the direct words, I shall obey. πείθομαι governs the dative, so τοῖς νόμοις.
(c) future less vivid
εἴ τις τοῦτο λέγοι, οὐκ ἂν αὐτῷ πιστεύοιμεν. Were to say and should believe is the future less vivid condition: εἰ with the optative in the protasis, optative with ἄν in the apodosis. The negative of the apodosis is οὐ, and it appears as οὐκ before the smooth breathing of ἄν. πιστεύω governs the dative, so αὐτῷ. εἰ takes the accent thrown back onto it by the enclitic τις, and so is printed εἴ τις.
(d) past contrafactual
εἰ ταῦτα πρότερον ἤκουσαν, οὐκ ἂν ἐφοβήθησαν. Had heard and would have been afraid is the past contrafactual: εἰ with the aorist indicative in the protasis, aorist indicative with ἄν in the apodosis. The ἄν is not optional — without it the sentence states that they were in fact not afraid, which is a different claim. ἐφοβήθησαν is the aorist passive of φοβέομαι used in a middle sense, they became afraid.
The breathings, written in
Every word beginning with a vowel needs its breathing: οἱ and ὁ take rough breathings, as the article always does in these forms; Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀκούσαντες, ἀγγέλους, ἔπεμψαν, ἵνα, ἐξαγάγοι, ἐκ, αὐτούς, ἀφικέσθαι, ἔφη, εἰ, ἄν, οὐκ, αὐτῷ, ἤκουσαν and ἐφοβήθησαν all take smooth ones. Accents are printed here as an edition would print them; the specification does not require you to write them.

Result: (a) οἱ δὲ Ἀθηναῖοι ταῦτα ἀκούσαντες ἀγγέλους ἔπεμψαν πρὸς τὸν στρατηγόν, ἵνα μὴ ἐξαγάγοι τὸ στράτευμα ἐκ τῆς πόλεως πρὶν τοὺς πολεμίους ἀφικέσθαι. (b) ὁ δὲ νομίσας αὐτοὺς φοβεῖσθαι ἔφη τοῖς νόμοις πείσεσθαι. (c) εἴ τις τοῦτο λέγοι, οὐκ ἂν αὐτῷ πιστεύοιμεν. (d) εἰ ταῦτα πρότερον ἤκουσαν, οὐκ ἂν ἐφοβήθησαν. The controlling decisions were: a circumstantial participle for the English having-clause; the optative of historic sequence in the purpose clause, negatived by μή; πρίν with the infinitive after an affirmative main clause; the accusative and infinitive after νομίζω and φημί, with the future infinitive for a future report; and ἄν in the apodosis of both the future less vivid and the past contrafactual condition.

Typical mistakes

Writing an optative in a purpose clause after a present or future main verb, or a subjunctive with ἄν where the optative was needed.
Using ὅτι after νομίζω or φημί, which take the accusative and infinitive.
Omitting ἄν from the apodosis of a contrafactual condition, which turns an unreal statement into a false statement of fact.
Writing ὅπως with the subjunctive after a verb of effort, where the future indicative is required.
Negativing the protasis of a condition with οὐ instead of μή.

Active revision

Build the seven conditions as a personal table, in Greek, using one and the same pair of ideas — if he comes, I shall know — so that only the pattern changes. Write all seven out from memory once a day for a week; then do the same for the four uses of ἄν, and then for the three constructions of indirect statement with one verb of each type. Fifteen minutes a day for three weeks makes the whole of subordination automatic, and it is the part of the composition that is otherwise slowest to write.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR)

Exam technique: choosing the route and the last ten minutes#

StandardOCR H444 Component 02 — 1 hour 15 minutes, 50 marks; answer either Section A or Section BOCR H444 Appendix 5d — learners will be expected to write breathing marks as part of the prose composition; learners will not be expected to write accents

Seventy-five minutes, fifty marks, one section. Neither route needs the whole time if it has been prepared, and both punish a candidate who uses all of it on the first draft. For Section B, a workable division is five minutes reading the English and planning, forty-five minutes writing, ten minutes on a structured check and fifteen in reserve for the sentences that turn out to be hard. For Section A, five minutes reading the Greek, twenty-five on the translation, twenty-five on the comprehension and grammar questions, and ten to check and to fill in anything left blank. Write the changeover times on the paper before you start. The reserve is not padding: on both routes the difference between a good mark and a very good one is made in the last ten minutes.

The plan for Section B begins before any Greek is written. Read the whole English passage first and identify, sentence by sentence, what the main verb of each Greek sentence is going to be. Mark the English where a clause will become a participle, where a genitive absolute is needed because the subordinate subject differs, where a condition or a purpose clause is coming, and where indirect statement will need the accusative and infinitive rather than ὅτι. Note any proper names and decide their Greek form once. Five minutes spent this way removes almost all of the mid-sentence rethinking that otherwise wastes the writing time and produces sentences that begin in one construction and end in another.

Write in ink, in continuous Greek, leaving a wide margin and a line between sentences. Do not write a rough version: there is no time to copy a hundred words out twice, and a fair copy made in a hurry introduces new errors of its own. If a word will not come, write the nearest expression you are certain is correct rather than the word you half remember, because a simple correct sentence scores better than an ambitious wrong one. Composition marks reward correctness far more than they reward ambition, and the passage will have been set so that ordinary Attic vocabulary suffices throughout.

The last ten minutes on Section B are a checklist, performed in a fixed order, and each pass looks for one thing only. Pass one, verbs: does every finite verb have a subject in the nominative, do they agree in person and number, and is every neuter plural subject followed by a singular verb? Pass two, agreement: does every article, adjective and participle agree with its noun in case, number and gender? Pass three, negatives: is every οὐ where a statement of fact is being made, and every μή with an infinitive, a purpose clause, a prohibition, a wish or the protasis of a condition? Pass four, subordination: is every sequence right, is ἄν present wherever an unreal or potential apodosis requires it, and absent everywhere else? Pass five, the page: does every word beginning with a vowel carry a breathing, and is every initial ρ written ῥ? Five passes, two minutes each. Doing them separately catches far more than one attentive read-through does.

For Section A the last ten minutes are used differently. Fill in every blank first — an omitted comprehension answer scores nothing and a guess scores sometimes. Then check the translation for words left out, which is the commonest cause of lost marks and is invisible on a rereading of your own English. Then check that every grammar answer uses the examiner's terminology and names the word that a participle or an adjective agrees with. Finally, count your answers against the question numbers to make sure nothing has been skipped. And on both routes, remember what the specification does and does not require of your writing: breathings are expected in the composition, accents are not, and no candidate has ever been rewarded for accenting a composition beautifully.

Worked example

The five-pass check applied to a piece of student Greek

A candidate has written the Greek below for the English: The general, having conquered the enemy, sent messengers into the city, so that the citizens should not be afraid. The armies were staying in the plain. The herald said that the war had ceased, and the citizens rejoiced. If they had heard this earlier, they would not have been afraid. Run the five-pass check on it. — ὁ στρατηγὸς νικήσαντες τοῖς πολεμίους ἀγγέλους ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἵνα οὐ οἱ πολῖται φοβῶνται. τὰ δὲ στρατεύματα ἔμενον ἐν τὸ πεδίον. ὁ κῆρυξ εἶπεν ὅτι πόλεμος πέπαυται, καὶ οι πολῖται ἐχάρησαν. εἰ ταῦτα πρότερον ἤκουσαν, οὐκ ἐφοβήθησαν.

Pass one — verbs and their subjects
ἔπεμψεν has ὁ στρατηγός as its subject and agrees. φοβῶνται has οἱ πολῖται and agrees. εἶπεν, ἐχάρησαν, ἤκουσαν and ἐφοβήθησαν all agree. But ἔμενον does not: its subject τὰ στρατεύματα is a NEUTER PLURAL, and a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb. Correct to ἔμενεν. This is error one, and it is the error examiners see most often in Greek prose composition.
Pass two — agreement inside the noun phrase
νικήσαντες is nominative masculine PLURAL and is meant to agree with ὁ στρατηγός, which is singular. Correct to νικήσας. Then τοῖς πολεμίους puts a dative article in front of an accusative noun; νικάω governs the accusative, so both must be accusative: τοὺς πολεμίους. Errors two and three. Both are of the kind that survive a general read-through and are caught instantly by a pass that looks at nothing but agreement.
Pass three — the negatives
ἵνα οὐ is wrong. Purpose clauses are negatived by μή, not by οὐ, so ἵνα μή. Error four. In the last sentence the apodosis negative οὐκ is correctly οὐ rather than μή, because it negatives an indicative in a main clause, so nothing changes there.
Pass four — subordination and ἄν
The purpose clause has a subjunctive, φοβῶνται, after the historic ἔπεμψεν. That is NOT an error: the optative φοβοῖντο would be the regular historic sequence, but retaining the subjunctive for vividness is good Attic and is accepted. The final sentence, however, is a past contrafactual — if they had heard, they would not have been afraid — and its apodosis has no ἄν. Without ἄν the clause simply asserts that they were not afraid. Correct to οὐκ ἂν ἐφοβήθησαν. Error five. Also in this pass: ὅτι πόλεμος has no article, and Greek requires one for this definite war, so ὁ πόλεμος. Error six.
Pass five — the page
οι πολῖται in the third sentence has no breathing. The article forms ὁ, ἡ, οἱ and αἱ all take the rough breathing, so it must be οἱ. Error seven, and the one error in this list that the specification names explicitly as a production requirement, since breathings are expected in the composition. Nothing here needs an initial ῥ, and no accents are required at all, so nothing else in this pass.
The corrected passage
ὁ στρατηγὸς νικήσας τοὺς πολεμίους ἀγγέλους ἔπεμψεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἵνα μὴ οἱ πολῖται φοβῶνται. τὰ δὲ στρατεύματα ἔμενεν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ. ὁ κῆρυξ εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ πόλεμος πέπαυται, καὶ οἱ πολῖται ἐχάρησαν. εἰ ταῦτα πρότερον ἤκουσαν, οὐκ ἂν ἐφοβήθησαν. One further correction was made in passing: ἐν τὸ πεδίον became ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ, because ἐν takes the dative for place where. That is error eight, caught by the agreement pass rather than by any pass devoted to prepositions — which is why the five passes work: an error usually shows itself to whichever pass is looking hardest.

Result: Eight corrections in four short sentences: νικήσαντες to νικήσας, τοῖς πολεμίους to τοὺς πολεμίους, ἵνα οὐ to ἵνα μή, ἔμενον to ἔμενεν after a neuter plural subject, ἐν τὸ πεδίον to ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ, πόλεμος to ὁ πόλεμος, οι to οἱ with its rough breathing, and ἐφοβήθησαν to ἂν ἐφοβήθησαν in the apodosis of a past contrafactual. The retained subjunctive φοβῶνται after a historic main verb was checked and left alone, because it is correct.

Typical mistakes

Writing a rough draft of a hundred-word composition and running out of time to copy it out.
Reaching for an ambitious construction that is half remembered instead of a simple one that is certain.
Checking the whole composition once for everything, so that agreement errors hide behind interesting problems of vocabulary.
Leaving comprehension answers blank in Section A on the grounds that they are not certain.

Active revision

Sit the section under full conditions once a fortnight: seventy-five minutes, one hundred words of English into Greek, or a passage of oratory with translation, comprehension and grammar questions. Then apply the five-pass check to your own work before you look at any answer, and record how many errors each pass caught. Within a month you will know which pass is most productive for you, and that pass is the one to run first when time is short.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

References & sources

Sources

Cambridge OCR

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages

Prose composition or comprehension

Key points

The same idea, seen from both routes

Key points

An oratorical period translated clause by clause, and four comprehension questions answered

Key points

Nine grammar questions answered in the Section A format

Key points

Four English sentences turned into Greek, with every decision justified

Key points

Four subordinated English sentences composed in Greek, decision by decision

Key points

The five-pass check applied to a piece of student Greek

Sources

Prose composition or comprehension

Key points

The same idea, seen from both routes

Key points

An oratorical period translated clause by clause, and four comprehension questions answered

Key points

Nine grammar questions answered in the Section A format

Key points

Four English sentences turned into Greek, with every decision justified

Key points

Four subordinated English sentences composed in Greek, decision by decision

Key points

The five-pass check applied to a piece of student Greek

Sources